My line shall remain, hidden forever
by Rogercat
Summary: The House of Gaunt are not the only descendants of Salazar Slytherin, there is a unknown female line in the Muggle world as well


Southern England, year 999 A.C:

It was the day before her wedding. But the young bride-to-be was not afraid, despite that she had only met her future husband a few times. In her hands, a lyre was resting carefully.

"I trusted your judgment to find a good husband for me, Father, and for that I am much grateful."

She bowed her head in submission, despite that it was not needed for her to do so like a servant. The older man held up a hand.

"Please raise your head, dear Qwen. I promised your late mother to give you a good life and that promise I intended to keep, to give her soul resting in peace after death."

She knew what he meant, the grief her mother had suffered over feeling that she had failed her duty to give him a strong magical heir. Not a son, for they had loved her nonetheless. But for another, far more tragic reason the late lady Cearo could not forgive herself about.

"I wish to give you a final blessing, my daughter, a last gift for making up what you was lacking at birth…."

A pair of green eyes looked up at him, and the daughter listened.

Those words Qwen recalled almost a year later, now married to the Muggle horse breeder Beorn Leod whose family owned the Avalon stud farm, when she gave birth to her first child.

"A daughter, my lady, a strong and healthy one," a maid spoke as the baby was wailing loudly in protest against the bath water. Qwen herself was exhausted after suffering the birth pains and getting her daughter out of her body, but she had survived.

"Seems like Beorn and I will have to try again for that son I joked to surprise him with before dusk this day. No matter, he said that it was fine with a daughter too, as long as we both lived."

Being handed her daughter for a first look, Qwen could see that her daughter would be taking after her mostly, but there was something of Beorn in her facial features as well. Taking a deep breath, she said the words her own father had told her almost a year ago:

"_**Blood of my kin, gather together. Enemies of my blood, stay away from us. My line shall remain, hidden forever.**_"

It was a magical protection meant as a blessing, to give her children and their own descendants a long life and good health. Qwen herself had suffered the misfortune of being born as a Squib, and with how her magic-blessed siblings had used her as target practice for their magic simply for knowing that she could not defend herself, Qwen prayed every day that her children would be Muggles, just like Beorn, to spare them the shame of having a non-magical mother and for not losing them to the magical school her father had founded with his friends.

"I think I will call you..._Sally,_ in honor of your grandfather Salazar."

~X~X~X~X~X~X

Well over nine hundred years later, another newly made mother was looking at her newborn son.

"Oh no, you just had to inherit James' hair, huh? Poor you, and here I finds it hard enough to make him brush it."

Her son whined a little from her arms, as if trying to say that it was not his fault for getting said black hair from his father. The red-haired mother had to smile, her green eyes shining in pride over her baby.

"Now, Harry, you are to hear a little secret, passed down from each mother to each child in my maternal family, as far as my own mother could tell. So please do not start calling for your dad yet, I want you to hear it first before he arrives to see you."

Holding him towards her chest, Lily spoke the same words as a unknown ancestor of hers once had spoken:

"_**Blood of my kin, gather together. Enemies of my blood, stay away from us. My line shall remain, hidden forever.**_"

It was the old blessing from Salazar to Qwen, passed down over the generations. Being Muggles for so long, no one knew where the blessing came from, but by being a direct descendant of Sally Leod though the female line from mother to daughter, Lily was the first magical descendant of the young woman who once had been born as Qwen Slytherin.


End file.
